Department of Management Seminar with Sarah Foxen, UK Parliament Engagement and impact in UK Parliament: academic claims meet parliamentary reality

Parliaments play a powerful role in shaping policy, holding government to account, and representing diverse societal interests. It is unsurprising, then, that engaging with parliaments has become a popular approach for researchers across disciplines seeking to generate research impact.

More than 10% of impact case studies submitted for REF2021 referred to engagement with or impact on UK Parliament, suggesting that it is seen as a prestigious and powerful site of research impact. But what does this engagement consist of, and how well do academics understand the functions of Parliament and the roles that academic research can play?

In this seminar, the Department of Management, part of the University Business School, will present the main insights from an analysis of REF2021 impact case studies that refer to UK Parliament, focusing on:

what type of parliamentary work do researchers claim to be influencing?
where and with whom are researchers engaging?
how are researchers engaging?

We will also discuss and reflect on a selection of REF impact case studies to explore the disconnect between researchers' assumptions and parliamentary reality and suggest some more realistic ways forward.